Note 89 — Chapter III · THE MORAL LIFE IN ANCIENT EGYPT: AN IDEAL OF SOCIAL JUSTICE

“In this judgment the Egyptian introduced for the first time in the history of man the fully developed idea that the future destiny of the dead must be dependent entirely upon the ethical quality of the earthly life, the idea of future responsibility,—of which we found the first traces in the Old Kingdom” (Breasted, A History of Egypt (1905), p. 173). Professor Breasted suggests a connection between the growth of the ideal of an ethical ordeal in the hereafter with the discontinuance of the building of immense pyramids. He says: “It is impossible to contemplate the colossal tombs of the Fourth Dynasty, so well known as the pyramids of Gizeh, and to contrast them with the comparatively diminutive royal tombs which follow in the next two dynasties, without ... discerning more than exclusively political causes behind this sudden and startling change.... The recognition of a judgment and the requirement of moral worthiness in the hereafter ... marked a transition from reliance on agencies external to the personality of the dead to dependence on inner values. Immortality began to make its appeal as a thing achieved in a man’s own soul” (Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt (1912), pp. 178 f.).